Walking in Memphis

We recently returned from Memphis, which is our second trip in less than a year. I seem to be drawn to Memphis. I don't know whether it's the "ya'lls", barbeque, and the feeling of a small but friendly city or the opportunity for professional development. Or both. This time, instead of staying in downtown, we were in the Eastern suburbs for the most the trip. We had great barbeque at Corky's and breakfast at Blue Plate Cafe.

Before we left for our return trip, we spent some time at Mud Island River Park. Mud Island is a peninsula that juts into the Mississippi River. Part of it is affluent-looking condos and the other part is an ampitheater, a museum, and retail space. Unfortunately, it looks like some of the businesses and have moved out. It might be a seasonal thing, but it looked to me like there wasn't quite as much money to be made by this venture and the upkeep is suffering. It's a shame, this could be a really nice facility.

What we like the best of the river park was the scale model of the lower Mississippi River. The model begins around Cape Girardeau, MO and ends in the Gulf of Mexico. The model reminds of a topographical map, but where the contours are vertical accurate. It's about six blocks long in total. The photo below shows one of the bends in the river. Owen is in the distance, near New Madrid, if I remember correctly.

It was a warm day, and we had a great time splashing in the water. His main goal appeared to be finding spots where he could jump accross the river.


And because Owen always challenges himself, he looked for wider, and then wider spots to jump across, until...
...ouch. He was fine, though his confidence and pride were damaged more than his knees.

A few more photos:

In this photo, the model represents Memphis. There's a map of Memphis just to the left (out of frame, but you can see the beginning of it) and the bridge on the left is I-55, which we drove out of Arkansas into Memphis. Doesn't this make you want to take out your little toycars and drive them over those bridges?

This represents the Gulf of Mexico. This is where I could the upkeep was not as good as it probably was in past years. This was filled with algae and debris, and if it weren't I'm sure that there would have been little kids playing in the water. Then again, maybe the algae and debris is intentional?

Last photo: a plaque for Dad to read.

Details

So what's been happening on the DIY front these days? Not much. But we've done a few little projects.

-Last weekend we officially called it quits on the quest for a Japanese maple. Our second try did not survive a late freeze last spring. Instead, we planted a purple leaf sand cherry.

-Over Labor Day we sanded and painted the garage. A tedious job, even with a borrowed orbital sander, but it looks much better than it did.

-We solved one of the issues that has been bugging me, which is our house numbers above the front door. The previous owners installed new flashing (and for that we say thank you) and the flashing is low and covers the house numbers. This created an interesting problem. House numbers generally come in two standard sizes: 4" and 6". The space above the door is 3".

Thus began the search for custom house numbers. The appropriately-sized choices I found fell into two categories: ugly and no way I'm paying that much for house accessories. That is, until I found Horton Brasses, Inc. Horton Brasses is a fourth-generation family-owned and operated business, specializing in brass and iron hardware reproductions. Check 'em out if you're in the market for hardware, from what I've seen, they are great products and it's not just brass. And although these house numbers were not cast by the Horton company on site (they import them), many of their products are.
And here's our new 2 3/4" brass house numbers, at a cost of $3 per number per shipping. Looks good, although the pizza delivery guy probably disagrees.

-Have a mentioned I dig found objects as art? I can take very little credit for this little project, I mostly nodded and encouraged. Uncle J. found this (oh, help, I going to mangle this) rotary cultivator disc (?). He gave it to Dad who, in a way that I lack the imagination to visualize, removed it from the axle. Dad was also tapconned the disc into the bricks outside our backdoor.
Looks nifty, I think, like a very spiky dangerous sun.

-And last, a new addition to the castle. Mom and Dad visited in August to help during my Sweden trip. One of Dad's project was to add a roof to O.'s castle. The frame for the roof was complete (the photo show the topmost beam) and the idea is to install a tarp for the roof.

But try explaining this to O., and here goes the logic: the roof of the castle creates a ceiling. What goes on a ceiling? Why a ceiling fan, of course. Lately, he's become a bit obsessed with them, and building fans of various shapes and sizes out of legos, tinker toys, sticks found in the yard, flatware, you name it. And because we are those parents who encourage these temporary fetises, of course, he had to have a fan.

Laying Low

Just a couple of quick photos from recent weekend adventures...

We took O. to his first carnival a few weekends ago. A few of the rides were his size. He had a great time, but rode them very, very seriously.

That same weekend, there was hot air balloon festival nearby. We attended the balloon glow, which is what the balloons look like when the pilot creates flares at night. None of my night shots turned out, but one of the dusky shots was okay.

They also had margaritas.
And last, the extent of the tree damage from hurricane Ike. We really lucked out with a mid-sized pile of branches and power out for only 3-4 hours. Several of our neighbors were not so lucky with major damage to their trees. I can still find power poles that are snapped in two.


O. was excellent help with the yard clean up. We decided that we were making a treenest for him, and then he was happy to pick up branches.